“People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.” — Less Than Zero

Bret Easton Ellis published his first novel, “Less Than Zero” in 1985 at the age of 21, while still a student at Bennington College. The novel follows a college freshman, Clay, on his first trip home to L.A. from college at Camden, back East. The book made best-seller lists in spite of loud criticism, and so did his next book, “The Rules of Attraction.”

If “Less Than Zero”’s descriptions of casual drug …

The Paris Review’s “Beat Writers at Work,” edited by George Plimpton and published in 1999, is not a comprehensive tome of everything you could ever possibly want to know about Beat writers. For example, though almost every single writer interviewed mentions Gregory Corso, there is no section on him. No female Beats, not even Diane DiPrima or Anne Waldman, have a section.

However, what the book *does* include is worth reading. After an introduction by Rick Moody, the volume kicks off with …

The Politics’ is broke:
No need to fret tho, here’s my plan to fix it.
As one who grew up during the sixties I found, the “take to the streets” mentality was ffective, but only in a limited way. The radical movement of that time did teach me some very good lessons tho, and here’s one of them.

In the early seventies I found myself in a small college gathering with the great troubadour, Harry Chapin. That night he sang a story that had a profound …

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - ‘Lewis Carroll’ as he was to become known - was born into a comfortable middle class family, on January 27 1832, the son of the Rev. Charles Dodgson, of Daresbury, Cheshire, England, and his wife Frances Jane. He was the third child, and first son of a family of eleven children.

At the age of 14 he was sent to Rugby School, where he was evidently unhappy. He made reference years later to the ‘annoyance’ he had suffered there ‘at night’ …

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on 24th September, 1897. The dichotomy he was to find within himself in later life - half wide-eyed boy from the mid- West, half upper-class socialite - was in evidence from his birth. His father was from a well-to-do family which had fallen upon hard times. F. Scott was named after the composer of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, Francis Scott Key, a direct relation. Fitzgerald’s mother was a member of the petit bourgeoisie and was both loved …

Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Lafitte into a wealthy Parisian family. His father was a lawyer and amateur painter who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. Cocteau’s father had a lasting influence on his son. According to psychoanalytical critics this tragic event also created his awareness of human weakness which he compensated by putting himself in the service of the performing arts and the mysterious forces in the universe. Poetry was for Cocteau the basis of all art, a “religion without hope.” In the secondary …

Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo were among the first collectors of works by the Cubists and other experimental painters of the period, such as Pablo Picasso (who painted her portrait), Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque, several of whom became her friends. At her salon they mingled with expatriate American writers, such as Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, and other visitors drawn by her literary reputation. Her literary and artistic judgments were revered, and her chance remarks could make or destroy reputations. In her own …

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you�ll probably want me to say is how great the Catcher in the Rye is, and how it changed my life, and all that existential angst kind of crap, but I don�t feel like saying that if you want to know the truth.

It�s just a book for chrissakes, about some lousy goddamn kid who goes to New York for a few days. If there�s one thing I hate, it�s phoney books. Don�t even mention …

The Nudes of God is a book of poetry, the first by Dr. James Barfoot, a Philosophy professor retired from Auburn University at Montgomery. He is originally from Mobile and currently living in Montgomery. The book explores themes of sexuality, philosophy and religion by juxtaposing imagery from these topics as well as classical mythology and current culture.

Though retired from AUM as a philosophy professor, I can remember that Dr. Barfoot has written poetry for a quite a while. Knowing him both …

‘Walden’ by Henry David Thoreau is a witty, refreshing book about a man at peace with the natural world around him.

Thoreau makes references to many varied subjects, and many different kinds of readers will find ways to relate to what he says. He refers to mythology, history, poetry, knowledge of plants and wildlife and carpentry, then comes full-circle and tells us what he is doing, but finally tells us that none …